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In fact, as well as being a close friend of Diana, Princess of Wales, Mrs Samuel is the founder patron of a charity for bereaved children and parents, and nursed her twin brother through an addiction to drink and drugs.

The experience was in marked contrast to her gilded background – she is a member of the Guinness dynasty and her husband Michael is a member of the Hill Samuel dynasty – but left her determined to help others. Besides her role for Child Bereavement UK, which supports both bereaved children and parents who have lost a child, she also holds an NHS post as a maternity and paediatric counsellor at St Mary's Hospital in London – where Prince George was born – which involves supporting families whose children die.

One of five children, she has a twin brother, Hugo, two minutes her senior, who is an artist living in America. She also has older twin sisters, one of whom, Sabrina, went out with the Prince of Wales.

"There is a special, complex bond between twins, but it's also a competitive relationship," she has said.

"I coped by being the opposite of Hugo. He was labelled the naughty one at nursery, and I was good, even though I have as much potential to be bad as he does to be good."

Her life progressed in the traditional fashion: she went to live in Paris at 16, married Michael Samuel, of the Hill Samuel banking family, now a businessman, when she was 20 and had Natasha, the first of four children, at 21.

But then her relationship with her twin took the foreground: he became addicted to drink and drugs.

"I did my best to yank him out of his drink and drugs... and nagged him like a 105-year-old maiden aunt," she has said.

"But because I don't drink, it was hard to talk about the horrors of drinking. I gave up in my 20s, because alcohol has played a big part in our family, and I didn't want that.

"When he decided to go to Narcotics Anonymous I went too, because I wanted a deeper understanding of what someone drinking as he was goes through."

Partly behind the problem, she concluded, was her family's difficulties with communication.

"I wish we'd understood earlier that our learned 'stiff upper lip' was necessary to allow us to go about our business and to function, but that taking it into our own family, as we did, built barriers and caused difficulty."

There is a parallel here, surely, with the Duke of Cambridge's own experience of his parents' inability to communicate.

It was chairing a meeting of the charity Birthright, now called Wellbeing, that set Mrs Samuel on her current path in her late 20s.

"I realised that if a family had a stillbirth or a bereavement, there was no proper service to support them and guide them through what was happening," she said.

"The thought that bereaved parents might be left floundering haunted me."

Impelled to act, she completed a counselling qualification in 1992. Two years later, she worked with founder Jenni Thomas to launch The Child Bereavement Trust, now Child Bereavement UK, to support families through their losses.

At the same time, her friendship with Diana, Princess of Wales was a continuing thread through her life, after the pair met at a dinner party in 1987.

"We simply saw something in each other," Mrs Samuel said. "She was very open and laughed a lot.

"She asked me to lunch because I lived close by Kensington Palace and we ended up seeing each other regularly. She used to drop by after picking William and Harry up from school."

Both women had married young and, more significantly, shared a passion for helping others.

When the charity was launched, the Princess made an unscheduled visit, despite her decision to retire from public life.

"The night before the launch Diana helped me choose what to wear and gave me flowers to wish me luck. The things a good friend does."

In her private life, meanwhile, the Princess was godmother to Mrs Samuel's youngest child, Benjamin, now 24.

The women shared other good times too: when the Princess watched the 1994 Wimbledon men's final from the Royal Box, Mrs Samuel was beside her.

And after her death in 1997, Mrs Samuel was one of the friends whose bond with the young Prince William grew.

His recognition of this was made formal in 2009, when he agreed to be royal patron of Child Bereavement UK and spoke movingly of his own grief.

"Life has altered as you know it, and not a day goes past without you thinking about the one you have lost," he said.

"I know that over time it is possible to learn to live with what has happened and, with the passing of years, to retain or rediscover cherished memories."

As Mrs Samuel commented at the time: "Prince William is no different to... any other child in Britain who loses a parent."

He has continued to be actively involved in the charity, visiting its headquarters earlier this year accompanied by his wife, then five months pregnant.

Giving Mrs Samuel the role of godmother to their first son is the final confirmation, if one were needed, of the respect in which the pair hold her.

Likewise choosing someone of his mother's generation, as well as her friend, to be godmother to his own son is a way to for the Duke to keep his mother involved in his life.

You can even hear echoes of the Princess in her explanation of why her work means so much to her: "It broadens my life in every sense. You experience people in ways that you don't in any other part of your life.

"They show such courage and strength in very painful circumstances that it renews my faith in human nature."

The qualities demanded in her work – public service and personal empathy – suggest that Prince George's parents' choice of godmother shows that they want the future king to hold them too.